Three Poems by Tatiana Daniliyants, translated by Katherine E. Young


Waking Up

 

1

 
What could be better:
a fresh happy-dress,
laid out on the bed in the morning!
 
 

2

 
Wearing its news, the whole world
digs painfully into me,
probing my reaction.
 
 

Unnamed

 
          *Ithaca, friend, Ithaca.
          **...isn’t it time to go home?
 
 
...where did I leave my head?
And where – my heart?
In what place, city, village?
...
In which face did I freeze?
In which eyes was I reflected?
In which heart did I settle?
In the hollow of that tree
in the shadow of that place
...under the heavenly tree
of Eve-heaven-Adam...

I remained
in the atmospheric layers
of the night sky
in early summer....
 
 

Untitled [“Eyes in sockets”]

 
Eyes in sockets,
teeth in gums,
heart in chest.
Where, where is the place of fire?
 
 
Tatiana Daniliyants is a poet, film-maker, and artist. She is the author of three books of poetry in Russian: Red Noise (2012), White (2006), Venetian (2005), and four bilingual books (in Russian paired with Polish, Italian, French, and Armenian). She has twice won the International Festival of Verse Libre (Russia), as well as the Nosside prize (Italy). In 2014 she received the Catherine the Great medal for achievement in contemporary Russian literature (St. Petersburg Union of Avangardists). Her poetry has been translated and published in English, French, Italian, Polish, Armenian, German, Serbian, Macedonian, and other languages.
 
Katherine E. Young is the author of Day of the Border Guards, 2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist. Young is also the translator of Two Poems by Inna Kabysh; her translations of Russian and Russophone authors have won prizes in international competitions and been published widely internationally, including in Subtropics, The White Review, Words without Borders, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, and 100 стихотворений о Москве: Антология (100 Poems about Moscow: an Anthology), winner of the 2017 Books of Russia award in Poetry. Several translations have been made into short films. Young is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow and currently serves as the inaugural poet laureate for Arlington, Virginia. http://katherine-young-poet.com/